Japan Vehicle Data
Japanese-language primary sources, aggregated for buyers outside Japan

Japan's Auction Market, Published Monthly and Free — The USS Data Nobody Outside Japan Reads

Published 2026-07-31

When you ask an exporter what a car should cost, you get their price. What you don’t get is the wholesale market they bought it in. That asymmetry is the business model, and it is why no exporter will ever publish it for you.

But Japan’s largest auction operator publishes it themselves, every month, for free — because they have to.

USS Co., Ltd. is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market (ticker 4732). Listed companies file monthly operating disclosures for investors. Those disclosures happen to contain the three numbers that describe the Japanese used car auction market: how many cars were offered, what percentage sold, and the average hammer price.

Roughly 30% of the Japanese auction industry passes through USS. It is the closest thing to a market index that exists, it is in Japanese, and we have found no English-language coverage that uses it.

1. Where it is, and when

Monthly data: ussnet.co.jp/ir/library/monthly/

Published as 月次データ / オークションデータ速報 (“preliminary auction data”) around the 5th or 6th of each month, covering the previous month. Observed release dates: December 2025 data on 6 January 2026; January on 5 February; February on 5 March; March on 6 April.

Alongside it, USS releases 中古車オークション業界データ(速報) — preliminary industry-wide data, not just their own — on the same day.

At each quarter end they also publish USSグループ中古車オークション実績(速報), group auction results. Note that USS’s fiscal year runs 1 April to 31 March, so “FY2027/3” means April 2026 through March 2027.

Two publisher’s notes worth carrying over, because they affect how you read the numbers: figures are truncated below the displayed unit, and percentages are rounded to two decimal places.

2. The three numbers

JapaneseWhat it isWhat it tells you
出品台数Lots offeredSupply entering the market
成約率Conversion rate — percentage of lots that soldDemand. The leading indicator
平均成約単価Average hammer priceThe headline price level

Recent figures

PeriodLots offeredConversionAverage hammer price
2025 full year3,464,039 (+11.3% — first record in two years)66.1% (−2.1pt)¥1,226,000 (+3.5%)
December 2025256,699 (+4.2%)66.0% (+6.0pt)¥1,252,000 (+10.5%)
February 2025285,371 (+6.9%)66.0% (−4.6pt)¥1,260,000 (+6.3%) — record high

2025 also saw 882 auction sessions and 2,289,839 vehicles sold (+7.8%).

Read the full-year row carefully, because it contains a lesson. Supply rose 11.3%, conversion fell 2.1 points, and the price still rose 3.5%. Price and conversion do not move mechanically against each other. Do not build a simple rule out of one relationship.

3. How to actually read it

Conversion rate is the leading indicator

Japanese trade commentary on this data makes a specific point: when lots offered rise ahead of demand, a softening conversion rate is the early sign of prices easing. Price is the lagging number; conversion moves first.

If you are deciding whether to bid now or wait a month, conversion direction is more informative than the price line.

Use a three-month moving average. Single months are noisy for a reason covered next.

The distortion USS warns you about themselves

Month-on-month comparisons are corrupted by how many auction sessions fell in that month and which days of the week they landed on. A month with an extra Saturday is not a stronger market.

USS handles this honestly: they state the session-count effect per venue and publish day-of-week-aligned comparisons alongside the raw figures. Use those, not the headline year-on-year percentage.

For scale on how large the distortion can be: for April in FY2027/3, USS reported lots offered at 106.4% and vehicles sold at 111.8% year on year, with separately-disclosed day-aligned comparisons.

The timing finding: avoid February and March

Japan’s fiscal year ends 31 March. Japanese dealers buy hard in the run-up.

February 2025 set the record average hammer price of ¥1,260,000, and Japanese industry reporting attributed it directly to the approaching fiscal year end. Note what else that month shows: conversion fell 4.6 points while price hit a record — domestic buyers bidding aggressively on the cars they wanted and leaving the rest.

For a foreign buyer, February and March are the worst months to be bidding against Japanese dealers, because they are buying against a deadline and you are not. If your purchase can wait until the new fiscal year, waiting costs you nothing and the market is not competing with a nationwide inventory scramble.

We are drawing this from one strongly-attributed year, not a decade of data — treat it as a well-supported hypothesis and check the current year’s figures yourself, which is exactly what this data lets you do.

Read it in your own currency

The index is in yen. Your cost is in yours. A 3.5% yen-denominated rise means something entirely different at ¥140/$ than at ¥110/$. Convert before concluding the market got more expensive — a rising yen price and a weakening yen can leave your landed cost flat or lower.

4. What this data is not

It is a market index, not a price for your car. The average spans everything from kei cars to luxury imports. A ¥1,226,000 average tells you nothing about what a JB23 Jimny or an S15 Silvia costs. It tells you which direction the whole market is moving and how fast.

For chassis-level prices you need evaluation-point-level data, which lives behind auction membership — and USS membership requires a Japanese antique dealer licence (古物商許可) held for over a year, guarantors, a ¥50,000 joining fee, ¥11,800 monthly, and a ¥100,000 deposit. That door is closed to you, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.

USS is about 30% of the industry, so it is a large, representative sample — not a census. Their separately-published industry-wide preliminary data partly addresses this.

These are preliminary figures (速報), subject to later revision.

5. Other free Japanese sources worth knowing

6. A practical routine

Method and limits

Sources. USS Co., Ltd. investor relations monthly disclosures; Japanese industry reporting of those disclosures (Japan Automobile Conference); Goo-net 自動車流通 venue-level results; Japanese commentary on reading auction supply and conversion data. Collected 2026-07-31.

Limits:

Sources